NEW YORK -- A little less than three hours before the biggest moment of his football career to date, Manti Te'o sat in a hotel ballroom wearing a suit and a leafy green and goal lei and insisted he did not travel here to finish second in the Heisman Trophy balloting.
"Obviously," the Notre Dame linebacker said, "I want to win."
Instead, he became another defender foiled by Johnny Football.
Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel became the first freshman in history to win the Heisman Trophy on Saturday, a kinetic playmaker who outdistanced Te'o and relegated the Irish's captain to a tie for the best finish ever for a pure defender, matching Hugh Green's second-place finish in 1980.
Manziel won the award with 2,029 total points, including 474 first-place votes. Te'o was second with 1,706 points and 321 first-place votes. The 303-point disparity was just a titch wider than Green's 267-point differential in 1980.
"Win or lose," Te'o said before the event, "I'm just very honored to be here with these two guys."
He was also asked to think back to another December moment, one year earlier, when the Notre Dame linebacker spurned the NFL for one more year in South Bend.
He was asked if he ever could have imagined this.
"Not in a million years," Te'o said at a news conference with fellow finalists Manziel and Collin Klein of Kansas State.
"When I decided to come back, it was just to get better and improve my own game and just enjoy experiences and memories I could create with my team and my family. I never thought I'd create memeories in New York, let alone create memories Jan. 7 in Miami."
Indeed, Te'o has long said that hoisting a crystal ball trophy after the BCS championship game would trump hoisting a Heisman Trophy on Saturday night.
So there is one more seismic moment to come, but for now, suspense and nerves revolved around Te'o beating out Manziel -- the freshman phenom known as Johnny Football -- who seems to be a prohibitive favorite in all straw polls.
"Obviously I want to win," Te'o said. "I didn't want to come here to get second. I want to win. And I want to win because I want that honor and attention not only for me but my family. I'm not just me. I represent a whole bunch of people. It will bring a lot of honor and attention and love to the people I represent. That's my whole thing."
And then, at last, Te'o will be able to get back to the business of football. On Saturday, for the first time in a hectic week, he took a nap. Now he just wants to take himself back to the practice field to prepare for Alabama.
"My mind is all on the national championship and winning that," Te'o said. "Today, I got the chance to take a nap for the first time. So I took a nice two-hour nap and woke up and worked out for an hour and a half, jumped in the shower and got ready for this event. It was the perfect day.
"For some reason, I'm not nervous. I'm not nervous at all. I'm more excited. I'm just happy to be here. I know back home, everybody's watching. I find joy in that."
bchamilton@tribune.com
Twitter @ChiTribHamilton
Texas A&M's Manziel wins Heisman
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Texas A&M's Manziel wins Heisman
